fireworks are better than gunshots, I think.
in Thoughts and Feelings
as 4th of july, Auto, black sweatshirt, boom boom boom, boom boom boom boom, bumper stickers, civil war battle, Draft, emergency, emergency room, gunshot, health insurance, idea, insurance, land, machine guns, mortal, shot, succession, way, while
Every once in a while I will dream that there is a battle being fought on my parents’ land. Usually, it is a Civil War battle, and no, I don’t know if I have gone back in time in the dream or if the Civil War has started again, just like those The South Will Rise Again! bumper stickers have promised, but thankfully never followed up on.
I say this because tonight I went on a walk. And while I was out in the dark, I started to hear gunshots. Odd, I thought. And then that part of you that reminds you how very mortal you really are started to get all vocal. I wondered if I should turn back. I actually imagined myself getting shot and then being in the emergency room and for a quick second felt grateful that I have health insurance right before I wondered how long it takes to recover from a gunshot wound–all that in about three seconds.
But I kept walking anyway.
Until I heard a great succession of them, boom! boom! boom! boom! boom! well, you get the idea. And then I figured that if there are machine guns in operation, I should probably stop prowling around in the dark while wearing my black sweatshirt . And also, I thought how what I was hearing never did sound like my Civil War dreams. I guess it’s because they didn’t have machine guns yet.
But then I saw a great blossoming of color in the sky above the tree line and I realized that no guns ever made anything so pretty before. And I finally started to run. But not because I was scared–because I wanted to see the fireworks.
I actually love when that happens. When it’s not the 4th of July and you’re thinking the sky is going to look like the same sky you’re used to (as if anyone could ever really get used to the way the sky looks!), when all of the sudden you see the darkness give way to some bright explosion of color and you are standing there surprised. And there is not much difference between you now and the kid that you were at one time because your eyes are wide and no, you don’t understand how they work any better now than you did when you were seven and all you can think about is how loud and bright and lovely these fireworks really are.
And it’s even better when you get home in one piece, not shot at all. Not even one little bit.
going on a hog. yes, that’s what I said.
in Funny Stuff, Loved Ones, Thoughts and Feelings
as beach, black leggings, black sweatshirt, craggy cliffs, freaky, hog, Latshaw, lyric, Mr. Chafe, ninja gear, shirt
This morning my niece Lyric and I went on what we like to call a hog.
Right, not the pig, though.
It’s the perfect blend of a hike and a jog. It’s what happens when you run on a beach with craggy cliffs that jut into the water, effectively making you stop your run and start to climb rocks up up up until you’re on level ground and can once again resume your run.
But that was at the beach and this hog was in Topanga. And my brother would have come with us, but after the beach hog he is sort of out of commission for any more for the time being. I don’t really want to say too much cause it’s his story to tell, but let’s just say that he earned himself the nickname Mr. Chafe.
And for the record, I earned the nickname Ninj. This is because I was wearing mostly black this week. Not really on purpose. See the weather is kind of unpredictable, so in addition to whatever it was I was wearing already, I’d bring some black leggings and a black sweatshirt for just-in-case-it-gets-real-cold-all-up-in-here, and so at some point in the day you’d see me in my ninja gear. Thus, Ninj.
Oh, and I’m really pretty stealthy too.
But back to the hog.
It was pretty eventful. Along the way, we ran across:
- many lizards. though, Latshaw-WEST is now pretty much acclimated to CA and hardly even mentions a lizard crossing anymore. still, they’re pretty darn cool and pretty darn plentiful. the lizards, I mean. though, the same can be said for Latshaw-WEST too.
- a huge deer. seriously. we were on the jogging portion of the hog when, seemingly out of nowhere, a deer leaped majestically out in front of us. we got a really nice close up. if we had been in a car, we might have even hit him.
- two creepers. as Lyric put it, one with his shirt on and one with his shirt off. when we first ran by them they yelled, Hey girls! Wait up! after us, causing us to actually pick up our pace more than anything close to waiting for them. eventually they gained on us, though, and I decided that we should wait and let them pass so that they weren’t such a big part of our hog. when we did, and as they passed us, the creeper with his shirt off asked us if the deer really freaked us out. Um, no. Not in the least. I was annoyed that he even asked and further annoyed that it seemed he assumed that was the reason for us pausing our hog. So I said as much. Or rather, I told him that we thought the deer was really very cool and left it at that. Freaked out, indeed.
We also threw in the plank and a couple of side planks for the mid-hog doldrums. Which is right around the time we discussed how freaky it would be to meet a spider whose face looks exactly like your own, though miniature cause it’s spider-sized (obviously). We decided it’d be less freaky if the spider had our sibling’s face instead, though don’t get me wrong, still very freaky.
And that about wraps up our hog.
I highly recommend them, for the record.
